Systems and methods herein generally relate to methods and devices for making books and booklets, and more particularly to relocating blank pages within such books and booklets.
Books and booklets are commonly made utilizing duplex printing (printing on both sides of print media sheets) and N-up printing techniques (printing more than one document page on a side of a print media sheet). In one example, four document pages can be printed on a single print media sheet by printing two document pages on each side of the print media sheet. This print media sheet can then be folded along the area between the document pages providing an item similar to a greeting card that can be opened. Multiple sheets printed and folded in the same way can be joined together (stapled, bound, glued, etc.) to create books or booklets. Sophisticated systems determine the order and orientation of the document pages printed so that the pages of the document are sequential as the pages of the completed and bound booklet are turned by the reader of the book.
In the above example, each print media sheet has four locations where document pages can be located; however, the number of pages in the document may not be divisible by four, resulting in blank pages (blank document page locations) on up to three of the four available printing locations.
Therefore, when a booklet job contains a number of pages not equal to a multiple of four, blank pages are placed in the job starting from the back going forward (i.e. last page of the booklet, 2nd to last page in the booklet, then the 3rd to the last page in the booklet). For example, in a four page booklet, with three imaged pages, a blank page would be located on page four of the booklet. If the situation is not acceptable to the user, the user returns to the document creation/editing application to perform some pre-press work and create a new booklet job with a blank page on a different sheet (e.g., the second sheet) before resubmitting the booklet for printing, which can be time consuming and cumbersome.